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Comment by muppetman | Hacker News Reader

I'm amazed I'm the only one it seems that things this is pretty lame and not going to be that popular. People _already know_ your life story, that's usually why their your (at least close) friends. Do you really want to see your workmates "life story"?

For those that think this is genuinely going to be a good and popular thing, could you explain why? You probably all know much better than me, so I am interested to hear why people think this'll be popular (which they obviously do, looking at every other comment here!)

I guess it could be useful to turn Facebook into a dating site - is that the bit I'm missing?

Edit: To downvoters: I'm more than happy to accept I'm wrong, I'd just like to know why I am. Cheers.

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I think this is more geared towards the narcissist in all of us. You read your own timeline, not your workmates'.

I hate to be a tin foil hat on this, but it really seems like a perfect way to get people to turn over even more personal/private information (especially the kinds they don't usually post in a day-to-day status update, like date of graduation, age, schools, etc) for Facebook to sell to advertisers.

Facebook doesn't sell anyone's data to advertisers - we let advertisers target ads based on certain criteria. I'm curious what makes you think we sell people's data? (I'm an engineer at Facebook.)

Perhaps I am generalizing too much - what I truly meant was this feature enables Facebook to have even more fine-grained criteria on which to sell ads.

Which criteria?

Criteria like age, location, education, interests etc. You can see the entire list when creating a Facebook ad: http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/. But the advertisers don't get to see what belongs to who, unless someone clicks on an ad, buys something and they backtrace all of that. They only target it.

Not a chance they would sell data, that would be a one-off! You want to "rent" access to the data clusters to advertisers without providing them ways to bypass you in the future!

Very, very good point. I don't know why I didn't think of this. Thanks!

I often receive friend requests from people who I have recently met through work, going out, friends of friends, etc.

It seems like it would be a good way for these people who know a little bit about me to quickly learn a little more about me.

The tragedy is that online profiles are becoming so efficient at conveying personal stories that there's nothing left to talk about face to face.

"I had a wonderful time at Yellowsto--"

"I know."

I experienced this when I first tried out online dating. One of my first dates felt more like our 3rd or 4th so it really was hard to break the ice.

I took this to mean that before you met in real life, you researched the other person so intently you felt like you'd spent 2-3 evenings together (talking) already? Is that what you meant?

I dunno, in my experience OKCupid profiles (the best available online dating site the last time I was single) were just a thin veneer of bullshit designed to sell only the best qualities. Nothing wrong with that per se but I never felt like I learned anything real about a person other than a few facts sprinkled in here and there.

"In my experience OKCupid profiles (the best available online dating site the last time I was single) were just a thin veneer of bullshit designed to sell only the best qualities."

The same could be said about meeting people in real life.

No research. We just exchanged a few emails before we met.

I often have to have about 15 minutes of background talk when I meet someone about stuff I already know about them because I Googled them. Certainly I have to pretend I don't know all these things for the sake of not being awkward. :)

Agree and I probably wasn't clear in my original post. This does seem like a neatish feature, but (at least) some of the comments seem to make it sound like it's going to totally revive Facebook, which I can't see.

Any new feature has to be a good thing though, I didn't express that clearly (at all?) in my original comment.

So true; I welcome the addition but I don't expect it to revolutionise Facebook!

Though I disagree that any new feature is a good thing :P

I have to agree with you; I couldn't care less about this feature.

From my understanding, the timeline will feature your most recent activity and then summarize the rest of it. Therefore you only really drill down on the people you're interested in learning more about anyway. If it's just a random coworker, you'll focus on the above-the-fold recent activity.

It really makes sense to me... When you get down to the "show more" link at the end of a friend's profile what you really want is a summary of the important stuff beyond that. It actually reminds me of when you got the bottom of your feed on friendfeed and were presented with a "best of day" link.

I dunno, I just enabled it and I'm liking it.

I'm wondering why my events are visible to the public though.

Dont about the downvotes. It's probably because you haven't used the timeline features yet.

As a current user of the timeline feature (it is available to Facebook developers), I am amazed and almost creeped out about how easy it is for me to see back to the very day that I joined Facebook, and to easily review all my interactions since then. I can assure that you will be too.

Yea I've just found out how to enable it and have been looking at it. It certainly is initially exciting, but is it a killer feature? I have my doubts. That said I appreciate everyone (yourself included) that took the time to explain their POV in detail.

honestly, i was worried too. but after setting up my timeline, it looks quite nice. one of the unused assets of facebook and twitter are our past activities on them, it is more profound in case of twitter, where consuming our past tweets is really a bad experience, honestly i dont know it would add much to the twitter experience. the other end of this spectrum is the photos experience in facebook. no matter at what time you added a photo in facebook, there is this photos app to make it easier to consume it all at a time, and checking out the albums of a friend/stalkee/victim is one of the things i would do most of the time when i am in their profile. now with timelines, you will be knowing more about the person, and i think i will be spending quite some time checking out friends timelines similar to albums. even though some what skeptical at first, after using it, i quite like it. it is not clumsy at all.

Because people love revisiting the past.

Lol, reminds me of a season 9 episode of king of the hill. Not sure which one anymore. After half way I think.

One of Hank Hill's employees shows up on his doorstep demanding he hang out, but Hank refuses to mix work and personal relationships.

Just thought I'd share :P

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